Haste makes waste

Odd title for a blog post…but I am referring to drawing skills. Which I have not cultivated in a long time. I have also, I discovered when I started trying to draw, come to rely way too much on photos off the internet, and while they can pinch-hit, nothing compares to live models, with which I haven't practiced in a long time. And when it comes to imagination, I'm great at assembling disparate items into a whole to make something new, but I have no original thoughts re: drawing!

In fact, I will confess here that sometimes, when I want to make a painting, I cheat by doing a trace of whatever it is I want to paint, just to get an accurate shape/outline, and then I paint, because that's what I enjoy.

So now that I need those drawing skills, my haste in glossing over them in favor of getting to the painting means they are nowhere to be found! I know I used to have some…or at any rate, they were better back a while ago...

I'm taking an illustration class this summer, and our assignment this week was to go home and do some preliminary sketches of our characters. The characters I selected are cats, and I am discovering that cats are hard to draw! You wouldn't think so, when you look at them as a series of shapes, but if you get them just the slightest bit wrong, it sticks out like a sore thumb, because we all know what a cat is "supposed" to look like.

So--I did a bunch of really bad sketches this week, which I'm not going to post here, and then I did a couple I kind of liked, and then I gave in and did a quick painting to make myself feel better. Which I did, but not much, because it didn't further me in my quest to discover my characters OR to regain my drawing skills. So…it looks like I'm in for a long slog to find both.